


Honesty

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Hogwarts Era, Romance, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-30
Updated: 2007-08-30
Packaged: 2018-10-27 08:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: After the events of HBP, Hermione and Harry have a too long-delayed heart-to-heart. Note: This fic focuses mainly on the friendship between Harry and Hermione, but there is definitely ahintof romance.





	Honesty

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

 

(Originally written: July 25th, 2005 )

 

 

Hermione sat on the floor of the darkened room, absently watching the fire as she tried to let the calm of the night wash over her. 12 Grimmauld Place had become much quieter since Tonks had left on a mission for the Order, leaving just herself, Remus and Harry in the old, rattling house. Hermione almost wished she had accepted Ginny’s offer to stay at the Burrow until Bill and Fleur’s wedding; at least then, she could have used the hurly-burly, sheer _Weasleyness_ of her surroundings to push everything else from her mind for another couple of weeks.  
  
Of course, that would have meant leaving Harry alone with Remus as they went over matters regarding Sirius’ estate. She knew that Harry hated being here, in this grim reminder of what could have been, and that he looked forward to after the wedding when the two of them and Ron would leave for Godric’s Hollow. But as she stared at a lone spider making its way across the hearth, she couldn’t help but bitterly wonder if her presence made any real difference to him at all.  
  
She sighed and leaned her back against a moth-eaten ottoman. “Knut for your thoughts,” a gentle voice broke in, giving her a slight start. Remus smiled kindly at her before plopping his own lanky frame down onto the rug next to her.   
  
Hermione had trouble meeting his eyes, which were so full of undeserved compassion. “I doubt that they’re worth that much,” she replied, her voice sounding harsh even to her own ears.  
  
Remus’ brows lifted and he placed a hand on her shoulder. “I very much doubt that. You remember I had the pleasure of being your teacher, once,” he paused and Hermione lifted her eyes to his. He gave a small but encouraging smile before going on, “I know your worth.”   
  
At that, Hermione couldn’t help but shudder in a desperate attempt to keep from crying. Remus’ expression grew grave and tightened his hold on her shoulder in comfort. “Is it your family?” he asked, the concern obvious in his voice. “I’m sure they’ll understand eventually,” he added in his attempt to comfort her.  
  
“No,” she gulped as she tried to compose herself. “No, I mean, yes, they are angry with me, but that’s not the problem,” she replied, trying to push thoughts of her parents – and their ire at her decision to postpone her education – out of her head. The last thing she needed was to bring yet another problem into the bubbling cauldron of emotions her mind had turned into.  
  
His hand moved down from her shoulder to rub soothing circles across her back. “I promise I won’t judge you,” he quietly responded. If she could have, she would have smiled in response – Remus always knew the right thing to say; she knew that he would listen to her with his characteristic acceptance and understanding. She gave him a weak smile, and thanked whatever god was left that such a compassionate man remained in her life.  
  
“It’s just...” Hermione began, and faltered. At Remus’ nod she tried again. “This past year... with Harry... I’ve been such an––” She sighed in frustration and screwed her eyes shut, as if to gain courage. “I’ve been such an ass,” she finally got out, and as if saying the first words broke a dam, the rest came quickly flying out of her mouth. “I’ve completely bollixed everything up, I’ve been a horrid friend, I’ve let everyone down. I was being––” she paused, looking down, not wanting to meet his eyes. “I was being selfish.” She suddenly stopped talking, as if considering whether or not to go on. “And so I’ve hurt the people I care the most about in the world.” The last came out in little more than a whisper, she was almost too ashamed to hear herself say it aloud.  
  
“Oh, Hermione,” Remus began in a reassuring tone, “I’m sure that’s not true. You’ve always been more critical of yourself than anyone else ever could be.”  
  
“It _is_ true! Harry won’t say it, of course, but I know he must think it too. How could he not? I’m supposed to look out for him, to warn him, to believe in him!” she cried out against Remus’ attempt to console her, the heat growing in every sentence she spoke. “And why didn’t I? Because I was angry at him for not listening to me last year? Because I let my pride get in the way?” she continued, her voice getting louder, but Remus simply continued to rub her back, silently encouraging her to finally release all the emotions that had been festering inside of her.   
  
“I was being a coward. I just didn’t want to be hurt... And look what happened!” she cried out, tears welling up in her eyes. “If only... if only I had been stronger, been a better friend, everything could have been so different! I... I f-failed... I failed!” she wailed, burying her face in her hands as she tried to keep from blubbering like a baby.  
  
Remus’ arms immediately went around her, comforting her as he rested his tired face on her head. “Shhhh, Hermione. You can’t blame yourself; there’s more than enough blame to go around if we let ourselves get caught up in such thoughts. Believe me, I know that better than anyone.”  
  
Hermione broke away from him and looked up, her puzzled expression causing a sad smile to appear on his face. “Do you think I don’t understand you, Hermione? Sirius might have seen himself and James in Harry, but I see myself in you.”  
  
Hermione snorted before wiping away the tears that had collected in her eyes. “That’s ridiculous. If I had even a little of your integrity I wouldn’t be in this mess.”  
  
“Hermione,” he replied with that strange mix of sternness and gentleness that had made him such a good teacher. “While I’m flattered that you think that I’m some sort of paragon of virtue, I most definitely am not. My whole life I have tried only this: to become a better man.” He sighed, and ruffled a hand through his graying hair. “It is the most difficult goal that one can set for himself, and I have not always been proud of my actions. I said that I see myself in you. Do you want to know why?”  
  
“Because we both read too much?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood.   
  
Remus only lifted a brow, unwilling to let her wriggle out of this conversation. “James and Sirius were my best friends; I admired them both so much in school. When they learned of my secret, I expected to be scorned and tossed away, but they instead became Animagi to help me. I still to this day cannot believe how lucky I was to have been befriended by the two of them. I was so _grateful_ for their friendship... A true, deep friendship – something that I had always wanted, but had never before had.”  
  
He paused, perhaps thinking about a less complicated time in his life, but all Hermione could think about was her own relationship with Harry and Ron. How happy she’d been to become best friends with the two of them after such a lonely childhood. And now she realized that she _was_ also grateful. Before she could think longer on this, Remus’ voice continued. “And so, my gratitude sometimes blinded me. You blame yourself, I understand. I could blame myself every day for not having been brave enough to stand up to James and Sirius’ torment of Snape. Maybe if I had stopped them, not been such a coward, things would have been different today.”  
  
“But that’s not your fault!” Hermione immediately cried out.  
  
“Or course it’s not, and – when I am thinking rationally – I _know_ that. But, like you, I cannot help but dwell on the ‘what-ifs’ of my life. I was supposed to be the calm one, the logical one, the voice of reason. I was supposed to protect my more brash friends from themselves. Does that sound familiar at all?” he asked, and smiled as he saw a flush enter her cheeks.  
  
“Hermione, you think you’ve failed, but I have seen you stand up to Harry and Ron more when you were only a third year than I ever did to James and Sirius in our entire relationship,” he continued, and Hermione could see the guilt and pain in his golden eyes. “You can’t always be right, we all have errors in judgement. And just remember this: you are all alive.” Hermione could not help but flinch at his words, thinking of how he himself had lost his own best friends. She knew that if the same had happened to her, she may well have been overwhelmed with remorse, whether it was deserved or not.   
  
“We cannot let ourselves live in the mistakes of yesterday,” he stated, firmly but gently. “Sirius and James wouldn’t have wanted that for me. Dumbledore wouldn’t have wanted that for any of us.” He grasped her hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “We have to look to tomorrow with hope. And we have to live in today with love. Cherish this time that you have together, the world is too uncertain to do otherwise.”  
  
She closed her eyes and allowed his words to sink in. When she opened them, she tried to give a smile to Remus, but he could see how forced it was. “It will come,” he simply said before giving her a kiss on her forehead and hoisting himself off the floor with the exaggerated motions of a man pretending to be older than he was. “Try not to worry too much,” he added as he walked out of the room, “the two of you will work everything out; you’re too important to each other not to. Good night Hermione, Harry.”  
  
Hermione’s eyes widened and her head snapped to scan the room. To her growing alarm, she saw that Harry was indeed sitting in a chair in the deeper shadows of the room, behind where she and Remus had been talking.  
  
Stunned into silence, she just gaped at him. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, his facial expression a mask. But she could still see his eyes. Eyes filled with so much emotion – sadness, grief, guilt and concern – that she had to turn away from him. To her own horror, she found herself bursting into tears as great, horrible sobs wracked her thin frame.  
  
She felt him sit next to her and then he pulled her into his arms, bringing her against his chest as she continued to sob. When her tears had finally run their course, she shyly pulled away from him and conjured a damp cloth to wipe her eyes and face.  
  
“Hermione,” she heard his voice break into the silence. She looked at him in some surprise, for it wasn’t the confident voice he had been using with such calm authority since Dumbledore’s funeral. It was heartbreakingly like the voice of the unsure boy she had first come to know and love. “You don’t really believe all that stuff you were saying to Remus, do you?” he tentatively asked. “How could you think that you... failed me... as a friend? I mean, I _told_ you that there was no way I could have been friends with you for so long and not known how clever you are. Remember? When you were talking about who the prince was? And I told Slughorn you were the best in our class.”  
  
He wanted to comfort her, she knew that. But if anything, his words threatened to bring back her tears. “Oh, Harry,” she sighed, pulling her gaze away from him; it seemed easier that way. “That’s just it,” she said with a quiet resolve. “Our first year, I told you that books and cleverness weren’t everything. That there’s bravery and friendship and... Don’t you see? I became exactly what I said wasn’t enough! I decided that I was right, and you were just being emotional, and so I completely dismissed what you had to say about Malfoy! If only I had put more faith in you...”  
  
“I recall that you weren’t alone in thinking I was wrong about Malfoy,” Harry replied with a twist of his lips that could have been a smile. “It’s not like Ron believed me either.”  
  
“Ron!” Hermione exclaimed, scoffing at the comparison. “But it’s not his job to see threats for what they are!”  
  
“Not his _job_?” Harry asked, puzzled. “Hermione, you’re my _friend_ , you don’t work for me.” When she didn’t answer him, he pulled at her shoulder, forcing her to face him. “That stuff that Remus was saying about him and my dad and Sirius. About feeling grateful to them and needing to look out for them. You don’t feel that way too, do you?”  
  
Hermione could say nothing, the realization that it was true was too new and painful for her, but her quivering lip told him what he needed to know. “Hermione,” Harry continued, “that’s just crazy! You shouldn’t feel grateful to me for anything – everyone knows that if _anyone_ should be feeling grateful, it’s me! And you don’t have to look out for me and Ron. You’re not our mother, you know.”  
  
“I know I’m not, believe me, I know,” she responded, the heat and anger in her voice shocking him enough to drop his hand. “But what are you saying? That you don’t need me? Well, you can save it, because I’ve already figured that out,” Hermione spat and began to rise when Harry grabbed at her arm, forcing her to stay next to him.  
  
“Of _course_ I need you! Don’t be ridiculous, we all know that without you... Well, I don’t even want to think about it. I mean it. Look at that stupid Potions book, you were right about that, weren’t you?”  
  
Hermione snorted, pulling herself out of his grasp, but remained next to him. “Big deal,” she muttered. “What difference did it end up making, anyway? Even if I had figured out beforehand that it was Snape’s book, would anything have changed, really?” Hermione expelled a breath, as if steeling herself up for something before looking into his eyes. “And maybe you would have taken my words more seriously if I hadn’t acted like such a jealous prig.”   
  
He gave her a small grin, and she knew that he had already put that part of their past behind him. She smiled in return, now knowing that she could do the same. But the smile soon faded. “I’m sorry about the whole Malfoy thing,” she said, her quiet words filling the room as she waited for his response.  
  
He looked down for a moment and expelled a deep breath. “Well, I suppose that if I hadn’t been so emotional about it, maybe you would have been more likely to believe me. After all,” he continued, raising his eyes to hers, “it’s not like I have a great track record of being right in the face of a lack of evidence.”  
  
They stared at each other, neither sure of whether or not to continue the conversation. The disaster at the Department of Mysteries had happened over a year ago, but they had never really discussed it. And so, her feelings about it had stayed bottled up, tainting everything since then. She had wanted to talk about it so many times, and had allowed herself to be shut up. Hermione steeled up her courage; she knew that if didn’t come out now, it never would, and that their friendship would eventually suffer for it forever. It was time to start acting like a Gryffindor.  
  
“You see, Harry, that’s just it. It all comes back to that night.” She looked up at him, and she knew he could see that she was worried... worried that what she was about to say would drive him away. He took her hand and nodded, letting her know that he was ready to hear her out. “There’s no other way to say this, but that night... Oh, Harry! I was so worried about you after what happened to Sirius. And you didn’t want to talk about it, and Ron kept telling me to give you space!”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, but Hermione wouldn’t let him stop her from saying what she for so long had tried to deny. “But that’s not all I felt. I was also angry.” She paused as she looked away from him, to the flames. “I had told you it was a trap but you didn’t care. So I was angry at you. For not listening to me. For not trusting me enough. But how could I tell you that? How could I tell you that when you obviously felt horrible enough? What kind of person would say ‘I told you so’ when her best friend’s godfather has died?”  
  
“Hermione,” Harry’s tried to break in, squeezing her hand, and Hermione could hear the pain clearly in his voice.  
  
She shook her head, but couldn’t quite look away from the fire. “No, please Harry, I have to say this. So there I was, angry, and guilty for feeling angry, and angry for feeling guilty... oh, I was a right mess. And then I _had_ to ask myself something: when did my feelings about you, and your feelings about me become the most important thing in my life? When did I begin to care so much about you that it was all that I could think about?”  
  
She paused, and Harry said nothing, though she could feel his large, callused hand tightening around her own. She looked up into his eyes, and it almost broke her heart to see the guilt that was so clearly visible. “I was scared, Harry,” she whispered. “Scared that I cared so much for you, even though it seemed that you didn’t trust me. Oh, I know it’s not my _job_ , but I couldn’t help but feel that I was _meant_ to help you. And then during this past year... after all that to then feel like you didn’t really want or need what I could give you anymore... I don’t know, I just sort of shut down. I suppose that I just couldn’t risk feeling like that again, feeling such a loss of control.”  
  
They sat in silence for a moment, Harry watching his fingers trace random markings onto her hand, before he finally spoke. “Is that why... this past year... you seemed a little, well, not completely yourself,” he finally got out, a slight flush creeping up his cheeks.  
  
“I know,” she whispered. “I thought I was protecting myself, that if I put a little distance between us, I couldn’t be as hurt. That if I tried to be a bit more _normal_ , my life would be so much better. What an idiotic notion! When you hurt your head during the Quidditch game, the first thing I wanted to do was to wait by your bed until you woke up. But I forced myself not to, forced myself to stay away, to keep some distance. It didn’t work – I ended up spending the entire time in the courtyard outside the hospital wing, just pacing and waiting. I knew I was being stupid, but I just felt so lost, adrift almost. And besides,” she added, a little hurt breaking into her voice, “I didn’t think that you had really noticed.”  
  
“Now you _are_ being stupid,” he responded, some heat entering his voice. “Of course I notice what you do and how you feel. I know I’m not as good about understanding feelings as you are, but don’t ever think that I don’t care about you and think about you. I think about you when you’re not even around. I see something, or hear something and I think about what you’d say, or how you’d feel, whether you’d laugh or be angry.” She looked up at him, stunned, her eyes wet and her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Hermione,” he continued, his voice low, but the emotion evident, “when you’re not with me, sometimes I even _imagine_ that you are, just so that I can hear your voice, guiding me.”  
  
At that, she threw her arms around him, squeezing him until he gave a low laugh. She smiled then, but as she went to remove her arms from about his neck, he rearranged them so that she was practically in his lap, with her shoulders encircled by his arm, her head leaning against his shoulder, the both of them gazing into the fire.  
  
“It’s true, you know,” he whispered. “About your voice in my head.”  
  
“Are you sure you’re not just going barmy?” she whispered back, joking with him for the first time in what seemed like forever.  
  
He chuckled and tweaked her nose. “You’ve always been my guide.” He sighed and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “We should have talked about that night sooner. I felt so guilty; I knew that I should have listened to you. And when you were cursed... Hermione, I don’t think you could ever know the panic that ripped through me. You say that you were scared of your feelings for me? You think I don’t understand that? Trust me, I know. I’ve never been more scared in my life as when I thought you had been killed. So maybe, in some weird way, when you pulled away from me, I... I _let_ you. I guess I thought that if you were with Ron, you would be safer, and then I would be safer too. It would all be so... so _easy_. You could be with Ron, I could be with Ginny, and we could just be like normal teenagers, you know, sitting around and laughing and forgetting everything else,” He sighed and paused. “But now I know that it wouldn’t have worked. I told Ginny that the time we were together it was like I was living someone else’s life. Not my own; it was just too simple.”  
  
Hermione pulled away from him and moved so that she was kneeling in front of him. “I suppose things aren’t always meant to be simple,” she responded, her brown eyes serious and her mouth graced with a sad but brave smile. “I tried to run away from who I am, thinking life would be easier. And in some ways it was, but in the ways that really _mattered_? Well, let’s just say I did some things that I’m not exactly proud of. I don’t want to be that person anymore... there are too many important things to worry about.”  
  
She paused and cocked her head to the side, her bushy curls swaying slightly. “I think both of us need to learn to have faith in each other’s instincts. We can’t always be right, but when you feel really strongly about something, I can’t just dismiss it,” she said, sounding like herself again. “And,” she added with an arched brow, “the same goes for you, too,” she finished decisively, smiling at his answering grin. “So, I guess what it all boils down to is this: I’d rather be scared – and sometimes angry – and _with_ you, than taking an easier path without you.”  
  
Harry smiled back. “I know what you mean. I couldn’t imagine doing this without you. Even though I may have to face him on my own, I know that I’ll never really be alone. What we have, it’s complicated, and sometimes it’s messy and sometimes we’ll bugger it up. But it’s _us_ , and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.”  
  
Hermione smiled back. “Yeah, it’s us. It’s not perfect, but I wouldn't want it any other way.” At that, he pulled her into an embrace that rivaled one of her own for its sheer force. She laughed, a true, honest laugh, and she could feel him smile against her cheek.  
  
“Best friends?” he asked, pulling away from her slightly to gaze into her face. She didn’t need to answer. Her smile said everything that he needed to know.

 


End file.
